Illuminate Press, Mysterious Deaths, and Secret Cipher Origins
Alan Greenfield discusses the dark history of Illuminate Press, the original publisher of his work on UFOs and the occult. He recounts the mysterious deaths of associates including Jim Keith and publisher Ron Bonds, who died of sudden food poisoning. Greenfield explains that he delayed publishing his second book for a decade due to pressure from a high-ranking official in a magical order who viewed UFO research as disreputable.
illuminate press· jim keith· ron bonds· secret cipher· occult
00:51 which means you'll unfortunately never hear my voice again. But I am psyched about this, I definitely loved the book or the two books put into one volume You know the connection between The Occult and The Sci-Fi Aliens is something we've talked about before but not to this depth and it's really crazy to me that this book came out in the 90s And I only just learned about it because it's very good Well the original edition of Secret Cipher came from Illuminate Press. At the time, that was one of the major publishers of both UFO and conspiracy stuff—a strange combination at best. And sure enough authors and ultimately the publisher mysteriously died off leaving George Andrews and me! I mean Harry Thornley is gone
01:53 Jim Keith who died in a very mysterious and unlikely circumstances is gone. And ultimately Ron bonds went to dinner with his wife and develop food poisoning which nobody else in the restaurant that they were going to develop, and within hours, which is how food poisoning works die so that was the end of Illuminate Press and it sold out the first edition But I think there was a long, long pause. Between the time that edition went out of print and as is always the case with the viper south there in the. Second hand market which by the way i get no royalties from not particularly matters to anyone other than poor for alexa, what are your manners to me but you know it's not my first concern my first concerns to get information out there
02:57 Between the first publication and publication of Secret Rituals for the Midden Black, it was a 10-year period. Why? You may say were you afraid of whoever is killing off these other people? No because I sleep with a gun under my pillow and a knife in my right hand. I'm just fine he said as he sank to the floor well that would be do, because the people in the apartment under me might get... they're elderly and might not understand. But in any case what happened was the illustrious Grand Puba of the ancient order of antiquity to which I then belonged we were driving from North Carolina to Atlanta because I talked him into doing an initiation that needed to be done that was
03:55 Above my pay grade gave me this long lecture on why i should not be doing ufo books as they were not respected. You know i mean in the relative order of things, I mean this is all marginalia to the public out there but there are relative orders of margin and the fact is that UFOs have a lot more public acceptance than the occult, which is assumed to be demonic or whatever. But nevertheless he was the guy in charge and I at that time cared what he thought so I put off publishing the second book and then published it with a long footnote addressed
04:42 indirectly to him and to other people that are in that same category saying, you best know what you're talking about before you talk about it. I believe that note is reproduced in the current edition of The Complete Secret Scypher for the Euphonauts which I think is now the definitive edition In any case, I haven't been affiliated with that cult in 15 years I haven't been really emotionally affiliated with it since i decided it wasn't an organization. It's a cult and, I'm just not a cultist. I don't want to wind up in the Branch Davidian compound burning up at the behest of some exalted poohbah or ruler. Not that saying this particular one is that extreme
